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I always feel uneasy about that statement in bold. That's just not how we plan hours, and it's definitely not how auditors check hours. If you could prove that your average timetabled/planned hours for a cohort on an qual was 400, but one student was timetabled less, you absolutely would not get away with pulling this rule out to justify why you wanted to claim 400 hours but only timetable 380. Equally, if 90% your cohort really do 150 hours of maths, but 10% complete early after only 50 hours (which is an unknown at the start, as we don't know how many will pass Nov resits), we have to record the Planned Hours for all students as 140? That doesn't make sense. The plan for all of them was 150, and some just didn't follow the plan. We've got some roll on/roll off 16-18 funded delivery (it's a nightmare to record), and each student has custom hours based on their own circumstance and plan, we couldn't apply that statement if we wanted to.
So, I basically ignore that statement as I don't really understand what it's getting at. No auditor has ever raised it, all they want is timetables to evidence the plan for each individual student.
With regards to your first question, we wouldn't add the Biology full hours back in. If the full withdrawal was before 6 weeks, it makes no odds anyway. If it was after 6 weeks, the rule about removing/reducing hours for withdrawals pre-six weeks on the Biology still stand. We'd keep the actually delivered hours for the Biology in any case.
To add to this, completely agree with Ruth 100%
The scenario I get myself twisted where planned delivery hasn't happened for example:
Scenario 1:
Level 3 Animal Management - 520 hours - L.D.A - 14/12/24 - Ok claiming for full 520
Tutorial - 34 Hours - L.D.A 09/12/24 - Ok claiming for full 34 hours
Work Experience - 30 hours - Never started or organised yet. This co-hort has their planned work experience time in March 25 is this a non-start and therefore hours shouldn't be recorded. Or do we justify that the learner would have done it if they didn't withdraw & we shouldn't be penalised so leave the learner as 584 & not reduce down to 554
Level 3 Animal Management - 520 hours - Student completed & achieves - Ok claiming for full 520
Tutorial - 34 Hours - Student completed & achieves - Ok claiming for full 34 hours
Work Experience - 30 hours - This co-hort went out in March 25 and 48/50 students went out & are ok. The two learners that didn't go out, would you non-start their work experience if a "replacement" of 30 hours isn't delivered to drop them down to Band 4?
I appreciate we aren't expected to go down the "actual" hours route & then you have things in the rules with discretions for full time BTEC's, 5 GCSE's, 3 or more AS/A2's where they expect to be paying you the Band 5 rate...
Ryan Wiseman We'd always* keep the WEX planned hours if they withdraw between 6 weeks and the end. It was planned and realistic, they just didn't follow the plan, which is the same for all withdrawals.
We do also keep the WEX hours for programme completers even if they didn't do a placement AS LONG AS most of the cohort end up doing a placement. If most of the cohort fails to do a placement, it clearly wasn't a realistic plan. If 95% of the cohort did a placement, and we can show evidence that we attempted to get a placement but failed for the other 5%, I view that like students who have time off sick and can't attend some lessons. As you say, we get paid on plan, not actual. Where you draw the line with "most of the cohort" is the tricky thing. We've historically got away with using 90%.
We do checks in Jan and Apr to make sure placements are happening, so we can get them to replace that with other EEP content if it's beginning to look unlikely that the placements will happen for enough of the cohort.
*If a whole cohort failed to do placements (it can happen), and we took the WEX hours off them, we'd retrospectively do that for any fully withdrawn students too.
Elisa Williams
Study Programme Hours
Created
You know when you have been in education for so long but you will keep questioning yourself on whether you ARE (or are not) applying the rules correctly.
Sometimes it's nice to clarify..... so is the below correct.... and provide good notes to new team members. My main question, I guess, is what happens when a student withdraw's from one element of the programme before six weeks (so hours adjusted) but then withdraws from all the aims some weeks later ??
Question - what if student wasn't attending biology (after a week or two) and hours were adjusted as they were contiuing on others) but after a couple more weeks they withdrew completely. Could all the hours then be included ??
Next Question: GCSE English / maths
Funding rules state: "Institutions must ensure that the planned hours entered on data returns are realistic and deliverable to each individual student and are supported by auditable evidence that the eligible activity offered to students is timetabled and exists. When institutions calculate planned hours using expected standard student attendance, they must use the average planned hours attended by students. This average must take account of students who both complete early and finish later than average."
What do you do about GCSE English and maths classes where students are entered for the resit in November ?
Thanks!